Word: mardy
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They call it "The Greatest Free Show on Earth"--this stunning array of over 20 parades down New Orleans's broad avenues. And yet, more than other celebrations, Mardi Gras is largely a local affair, enjoyable for the thousands of visitors from across the country but significant also as a provincial rite of passage for the participants...
...festival is given to New Orleans by a series of "krewes"--private social groups that exist solely to finance and put on Mardi Gras. Some of the newer krewes are commercial in nature. They bring in celebrities to host their parades and balls. Others represent local interests. Tulane University students, for instance, have their own "Krewe of Tuck," and members of New Orleans's black community, who participate in the more traditional parades only as "flambeaux" (torch carriers), put on an elaborate "Zulu" parade and ball...
...week-long festivities climax on Mardi-Gras Day, or "Fat Tuesday," when the oldest, most traditional krewes--"Rex" and "Comus"--hold their celebrations. On that day, everyone, young and old, dons a bizarre costume and by 10 a.m. the entire city is drunk, reveling in a combination Halloween-New Year's Eve craziness. The Rex King--a wealthy New Orleans civic leader--glides downtown to toast his young Queen in a ritual unchanged for a century...
...descriptions of Mardi Gras are fascinating, prompting one to try to envision the scene, and aided by photographs, the task is easier. But to imagine the New Orleans burgher, dressed in the black tuxedo, drink in hand, speaking out in favor of white-minority rule in South Africa, and before that, hearing the blond-haired fellow referring to the black men dressed in slave garb as monkeys, is much more difficult for me, as I sit in my Winthrop House room, isolated from the careless ways of the very rich, as well as the desperate struggles of the very poor...
...time, "we are glad that we are not one of them." The words belong to the children, who learned them from their parents and, in turn, will most likely pass them on down to their children. Entitlement explained why a blonde haired man sitting at the Rex celebration of Mardis Gras feels entitled to sit there and defend the privileges of the white minority in South Africa. And while this year's Mardi Gras celebrations were quiet, New Orleans did indeed have "its troubles" back in the '60s. Perhaps Coles's optimistic advice is best taken by both sides--that...